Your Cat & Other Space Aliens

That’s the title of livejournal user maryturzillo’s volume of poetry out from Van Zeno Press. Go out and buy it. Now.

In Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, Mary manages to express the complete range of human exultation and sadness in short, jewel-like paragraphs. Joe Haldeman calls her book “…a huge banquet of food for thought, as well as a display of poetic virtuosity and intense emotional complexity.” The book has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

It is an amazing book.

Things I Am Not Making Up

I knew there was a new film version of Beowulf in the works, co-written by Neil Gaiman. and I had seen a preview, and my first thought was, “I don’t remember so many women in the book.” So I was prepared to be underwhelmed.

I almost choked on my coffee this morning, though, while reading the New York Daily News “Fall 101,” a roundup of coming attractions in film and music, and found out who would be playing Grendel’s mother. That devil-shaped woman is played by none other than pillow-lipped serial adopter Angelina Jolie (last seen making grief unbearably telegenic as the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl in A Mighty Heart).

Having read that, I couldn’t help wanting a better look at this cinematic train wreck. Imagine my childish delight when I Googled up a Los Angeles Times review and found: “Later, Grendel’s mother (Jolie) seduces Beowulf so that she can produce a replacement heir that will allow her to reestablish her dominion over the kingdom.”

But Neil Gaiman is sensitive to the integrity of the original text. The LA Times piece wraps up with this:

“I have no idea if this thing is going to work because it isn’t done yet,” Gaiman said. “But because it’s so hyper-real and immersive, once you are two to three minutes in, I think it will own you for the full 90 minutes.”

Gaiman is also a vocal proponent of an unrated version of “Beowulf” down the line.

Even more than nudity, Gaiman said, “I just really miss all the swearing.”

A Three Hour Tour

The Redhead () and I toured Governor’s Island on Sunday. It had been 27 years since I’d been stationed there with the U.S. Coast Guard, and the homely government architecture brought up a lot of nostalgia.

In 1996 the Coast Guard decamped and turned the property over to New York, which is now in the process of deciding how to ruin develop it.